The Entrepreneurship Olympics

The Entrepreneurship Olympiad is an annual national competition addressed to pupils from secondary schools. It has been organized since 2005 by the Foundation for the Promotion and Accreditation of Economic Education with Universities of Economics from Cracow, Katowice, Poznan, Wroclaw and the Warsaw School of Economics. The Olympiad is co-financed by the National Bank of Poland and the Polish-American Freedom Foundation – the Strategic Partners of the Olympiad, as well as by the Ministry of National Education. The patron of scholarship program was the BGŻ Bank.

The contest is very popular among young people. The first edition attracted an impressive number of 14 000 participants from over 730 schools, 19 000 from 931 schools applied for the second one, 15 000 from over 800 schools for the third one, almost 20 000 from over 1000 schools for the fourth one, over 21 000 from over 1100 schools for the fifth one, a similar number for the sixth one, and over 19 000 from over 1000 schools for the seventh one, almost 21 000 from over 1100 schools for the eight one and over 23 000 from over 1200 schools for the current, 9th edition.

The Olympics aims at promoting and strengthening entrepreneurship among pupils of secondary schools, creating a positive climate over business activity and designing a didactic model which would support teachers in encouraging top-pupils to develop their interest in economy and to study at universities of economics. The required knowledge is compatible with the curriculum of the course on entrepreneurship taught at secondary schools. It is also each year enriched with one leitmotiv (so far, there were as follows: ‘Ethics in Business’ – 1st edition, ‘Creating the Enterprise’s Value’ – 2nd edition, ‘Psychology of Business’ – 3rd edition, ‘Modern Management − Concepts and Methods’ – 4th edition, ‘Marketing in the Enterprise – Mechanisms, Instruments, Strategies’ – 5th edition and ‘Market Investor – Stock Exchange, Privatizations, Mergers and Acquisitions’ – 6th edition, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ - 7th edition, 'People in company' - 8th edition). ‘Running own business’ is the leitmotiv of the current, 9th edition. Diverse aims and range of the Olympics’ themes result in a situation when both the knowledge of participants and the practical aspects: their entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviours are being assessed. The knowledge is evaluated with the use of tests whereas attitudes and behaviours are graded during case studies, projects and presentations.

Entrepreneurship Olympics ‘ laureates and finalists gain admission to particular majors or are granted maximum credits from a matriculation exam subject taken into account in the admission process at Universities of Economics from Katowice, Poznan, Cracow, Wroclaw and the Warsaw School of Economics.